House Home Family

by Knapp, Ronald G.; Lo, Kai-Yin

• ISBN13: 9780824829537
• ISBN10: 0824829530
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-30
• Publisher: Univ of Hawaii Pr

Summary

Drawing on the work of leading scholars in the fields of anthropology, architecture, art, art history, geography, and history, House Home Family explores and analyzes the functional, social, and symbolic attributes of Chinese dwellings. It goes beyond generalization to clarify the diverse nature of house, home, and family in China, exploring such topics as the Chinese garden as an integral part of living, house-building ritual and fengshui, architectural aesthetics, the inter-relatedness of furniture and architecture, preservation of historical structures, the structure and development of the family (jia), gender and household space, the role of lineage in the construction of ritual and social space, the function and meaning of the architectural division of space, and domestic space and privacy. The Chinese house, the elementary space in which a family lives and works, resonates the tensions between continuity and innovation that characterize China today. As a dynamic instrument of socialization and a domain of propriety, its "inner" and "outer" spaces as well as ornamentation and ritual helped shape the identity of the Chinese and simultaneously serve as a reflection of this identity. This inaugural volume in the series Spatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia's Vernacular Architecture contains more than five hundred illustrations, most in color and including a number of rare drawings that demonstrate the richness of domestic architecture and living patterns in traditional and contemporary China. Through its exploration of how Chinese families are organized and why Chinese construct their living spaces the way they do, this carefully researched, convincingly argued, and refreshinglyinsightful book yields a deeper and wider understanding of what it means to live and be Chinese.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Wen Fong
Looking Back on Chinese Art, Architecture, and History
Preface	xvii
Acknowledgments	xix
China's Houses, Homes, and Families	1	(36)
Ronald G. Knapp
PART ONE THE HOUSE
The House
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt
An Introduction	13	(24)
In Search of the Elusive Chinese House	37	(360)
Ronald G. Knapp
House and Garden
Joseph C. Wang
Sanctuary for the Body and the Mind	73	(26)
Siting and Situating a Dwelling
Ronald G. Knapp
Fengshui, House-Building Rituals, and Amulets	99	(40)
Chinese Architectural Aesthetics
Cary Y. Liu
Patterns of Living and Being between Past and Present	139	(22)
Traditional Chinese Architecture and Furniture
Kai-Yin Lo
A Cultural Interpretation	161	(44)
Sheltering the Past
Nancy Berliner
The Preservation of China's Old Dwellings	205	(18)
PART TWO THE HOME AND THE FAMILY
The Meaning of Jia
Nancy Jervis
An Introduction	223	(12)
House United, House Divided
Myron L. Cohen
Myths and Realities, Then and Now	235	(24)
The Inner Quarters
Francesca Bray
Oppression or Freedom?	259	(22)
Between House and Home
David Faure
The Family in South China	281	(14)
Ancestral Halls
Puay-peng Ho
Family, Lineage, and Ritual	295	(30)
Reading the Text of the Home
James A. Flath
Domestic Ritual Configuration through Print	325	(24)
The Symbolic Seasonal Round in House and Palace
Maggie Bickford
Counting the Auspicious Nines in Traditional China	349	(24)
Making Room for Intimacy
Yunxiang Yan
Domestic Space and Conjugal Privacy in Rural North China	373	(24)
Glossary	397	(18)
References	415	(26)
List of Contributors	441	(4)
Index	445